


History is Written by the Victors

by JediC8H10N4O2



Category: Star Wars - All Media Types
Genre: Gen, Pre-Star Wars: A New Hope, Rebellion, Why do we fight?
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-12-22
Updated: 2017-12-22
Packaged: 2019-02-18 08:53:08
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,031
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13096665
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/JediC8H10N4O2/pseuds/JediC8H10N4O2
Summary: She is one being. Born into the Empire. Raised with fear, being told the Empire was great.But she has eyes.She doesn't know what she should do. She doesn't know what's right. She only knows one thing.She doesn't want anyone else to grow up with fear.Who ever wins the fight will define what she is.





	History is Written by the Victors

**Author's Note:**

> This is a story I wrote when my GM pissed me off by calling the Rebellion terrorists, and trying to claim the Empire was a perfectly valid government and that the Rebels were causing all the problems.

Sometimes, Ali thought she had been born three decades too late, or maybe many decades too early. It was hard to tell. All she knew was the time she had been born was wrong for her. Wrong for everyone, really. She was born into the Galactic Empire, under Emperor Palpatine. It was all she had ever known, but it wasn't what she wanted.

She had been too young at first to know that there was something wrong. And it isn't like it was easy for people to do anything other than praise the Empire. So she thought it was normal to be afraid, to be petrified of the men-in-white, with the masked faces and much too perfect synchronized movement. She thought that was how it always was, and always would be, and it wasn't until she began to learn history that she began to know better.

They taught history the proper way, the way the Emperor had decreed it. How he took the falling and failing Republic and made it shine. How he saved everyone from the evil Jedi. But the words didn't always match the feelings people had. Her teachers would say the same story, of how the Empire came to be, every Empire Day, but their emotions would be...subdued. There would be longing, and hopelessness, along with the helplessness they all felt. Sometimes there would be a bitterness, anger at the Jedi for something that wasn't what they said.

It took two deaths for Ali to know what they were angry about.

Her uncle was a frequent guest of her father's, mostly because her father owned the only cantina in the area. Her uncle enjoyed drinking. He would come to their house for dinner, before joining her father at the cantina. Sometimes, he would start drinking at their house.

One time, the topic turned to the Empire, because one of her siblings had to write an essay, or had just learned something. Ali couldn't remember the why, she just remembered her uncle. He slammed down his cup, and started to rant against the Emperor, and the Imperials. Her mother made everyone hurry off to bed, and her father tried to get her uncle to be quiet, but it didn't work.

He was executed by firing squad for treason the next day.

Her parents sat her and her siblings down and told them that their uncle was wrong, the Emperor was gracious and good, and the Empire was the best thing to ever happen to the galaxy. She might have believed them, but they were nervous and their eyes were shifting around, and they were acting like her little siblings when they were scared of getting in trouble.

She shouldn't have known about the second.

She wasn't supposed to be over there, not really. But she was a curious girl, and her friends had whispered that the man told interesting stories. So she went to the small out of the way pawn shop, looked over the wares, and listened to the old man who would talk to everyone and no one.

She learned about the Republic and the Jedi. How the Jedi had been peacekeepers, before the war. How the war had ruined everything, and the war was the Emperor's fault. The Emperor, when he had been the head of the Republic, had agreed to war, had not looked for a way out.

“The Jedi,” he would say, not caring about who was listening, “Would help us, not harm us like the Emperor tries to say. What has he ever done for us?”

She was slightly hidden behind a shelf of things when the men-in-white, the stormtroopers, came in. She quickly hid, not wanting to be in trouble with her parents for being where she shouldn't. One of them asked confirmation for the man's identity, and when he didn't respond, she heard the sound of blaster fire. She shrank into a ball, and hoped and wished that they didn't look around the store. That they had somewhere else they needed to be.

She got lucky. They left.

She never told anyone about that day. But that was when she knew.

People were not happy. And people were not allowed to be not happy.

So Ali listened to what people didn't say, and she learned more than most kids her age.

People were angry the Jedi had left them alone, were angry with their representatives for agreeing to an Empire. People were angry that only a few were benefiting, and that many were starving. People were scared, scared of everyone different, of those unknown. No one knew who would tell the Imperials on you, and a xenophobia fell on people.

It made a sick sort of sense to Ali, because there were no other species in her class, at her school. And the lectures and classes were all skewed. How the CIS had been aliens, and nearly destroyed the Republic before the Emperor had managed to save everything. And how the stormtroopers treated other species was deplorable, and Ali had never understood because everyone had feelings, except droids, but they could talk and explain themselves and wanted and needed.

And when the Rebellion became something more than whispers, more than a passing thought in people's heads, there was discussion.

Some people condemned them, called them terrorists. Said that what they were doing was wrong and they should all be killed for it. The Emperor was good and gracious and helped people and the Empire was much more stable than the Republic had ever been.

Others acknowledged that some changes might be good, but the way the Rebellion was going about it was wrong. They were doing more harm than anything, and wouldn't it be better to change things from within? To do what one could and not cause mayhem and destruction?

But, Ali wanted to say, how can you change something, if there is no way to change things? That at least in the Republic, there had been democracy. People had a choice. There is no choice in the Empire. Not really. Rule by fear is not better than democracy, and even if the masses are too stupid to make decisions for themselves and the Emperor saved us from stupidity, isn't it our choice? Our responsibility?

But Ali didn't voice those thoughts, because those were dangerous thoughts. But she struggled. She went to school, helped her parents, played with her siblings. But she wondered.

People said the Rebellion was just a facade. Just a face for greedy senators to grab power. That it wasn't real. They said it was wrong, the beings of the Rebellion misguided. They said the Rebellion wanted anarchy, wanted to destroy civilization. They said the Rebellion enslaved humans.

But wasn't almost everyone already enslaved? There was no freedom to be yourself. You couldn't speak up against the Empire, even if you thought it wrong, without worrying about yourself and your loved ones. Non humans had a hard time finding work, and were constantly treated differently. Fear controlled everyone, fear of an army of faceless white men who marched under the banner of a cloaked Emperor.

And maybe some of the people who joined the Rebellion wanted those things, but there might be some who just wanted change, and saw it as the only way it could happen. The only way to take back agency they had lost, or never knew. And if they were terrorists now, if (when, pleaseandthankyou) they won, they would be freedom fighters.

And it was easy to think they were terrorists, when all the news reported was the civilian toll of attacks, but wouldn't the news not report the successful missions? The times no civilians were lost? When only military targets were attacked and destroyed? That would paint a picture of an unsuccessful and destabilizing Empire.

Ali was sixteen when she ran away. She didn't know where to go, or what she could do or offer, but she knew one thing: she did not want her siblings to live in an Empire where they had to live in fear of everyone, even family.

(Who else could have told the Imperials about her uncle?)

She joined a crew as an extra hand, hauling goods that were probably smuggled but she didn't ask. She kept quiet, and her ears open. Eventually, she would run into the Rebellion, right?

It wasn't until she was seventeen that she did. She had jumped ship a few times, once because she found out they were smuggling spice, and that was not something she wanted to be a part of, once because one of the other crew members was getting a little to interested in her.

It was an accident. She was a passenger on a small freighter, trying to get to a big starport to find another ship. She got lost, and found an unconscious pilot. With the rebel symbol on his helmet. Ali stared, having almost become resigned to not being able to help. She felt the captain standing behind her, felt his tenseness.

“I know a little first aid, do you think I can help him?” she asked, turning to him.

“Why?”

It was more than a question of why she would help. It was why did she want to. What had she lost.

“Everyone deserves to live the life they want,” she answered, to the asked and unasked.

She was delivered to the Rebellion instead of a starport, and she joined the crew of the small little freighter. She became better with a gun, a better liar. She was the best at listening, many times because people liked to talk to a pretty face.

Sometimes she looked in a mirror and saw a terrorist. Sometimes she saw a freedom fighter. Mostly she saw bags under her eyes. She saw a scared little girl who didn't know what to do, but knew she had to do something. And there seemed to be only one option for doing something.  
Sometimes she stared at her hands, and saw blood. Other times, she thought of the blood she had saved. Sometimes they had names, sometimes faces. Most times, it was nebulous. It was her religion, like the Force to the Jedi. She repeated the names and the faces to herself, when she woke up and before she went to bed. Her parents, siblings, crewmates.

Some of the members of the Rebellion might be more mercenary and actual terrorist, but she took comfort in the fact that she was not part of a group that had massive civilian casualties. There was blood on her hands, but it was blood that had spilt blood on its own. She was never asked to do anything against her moral code, and even though she thought she would have been prepared to do so, she was relieved it never came up.

There were good times in the Rebellion and bad. Sometimes the mission went well, and there were no deaths, and the information was secured or the payload dropped off. Sometimes the mission didn't go well, and the crew members would just sit together in silence in hyperspace. No one would say a word, they would just sit there. But no matter how she felt about their latest mission, or reports on other groups and the status of their mission, Ali was satisfied.

She was doing what she could to change things. She was putting up a fight, telling the Emperor that she was unhappy with the way things were. Happy people don't rebel. Fear doesn't last, because eventually people will become tired, or you will cross a line and make them angry enough to no longer fear you. Maybe the Rebellion would go down in history as a terrorist group. Maybe the Rebellion would fail. But Ali was doing what she believed was needed. Ali was trying to change the galaxy. And Ali knew her truth: she was as much a terrorist as the men-in-white who shot people because they said words that their leaders didn't like.

And that was something she could live with, in the hope that maybe someone like her could grow up in a world without either of them.


End file.
